Trademark & Copyright Committee

Responsibilities

At its December 12, 2017 meeting, the Board of Trustees discussed the need to protect RCA’s intellectual property by evaluating the need for trademark and copyright protection. It was noted that, since it was too expensive to engage an intellectual property attorney for this work, the Board would rely on volunteer RCA members to handle these issues.

At its January 14, 2018 meeting, the Board established an Ad-Hoc Committee on Trademarks and Copyrights and authorized the committee to submit trademark application for “Recovering Couples Anonymous”, “RCA”, and the RCA logo, as well as looking into the possibility of copyright protection for the logo.

Subsequently the committee met and decided to proocced first with the three trademark applications: “Recovering Couples Anonymous”, “RCA”, and the RCA logo.

Trademarks apply to specific goods and services. The first objective was to protect a key RCA asset —RCA’s literature.

The goods covered by the initial set of applications are: international class 16: specifically, “Publications, namely, books, booklets, brochures, informational sheets, pamphlets, and work-books, in the fields of couple-relationship recovery and improvement using 12-Step principles to restore healthy communications, caring, commitment, and greater intimacy to a couple.”

After RCA literature, the next most important intellectual property to protect relates to the RCA website. The committee will coordinate with the Technology and Web-site Committee as to the requirements for using the proposed service marks on the website.

The committee will apply for a copyright application for the RCA logo —logos are one of the few items that can have both trademark and copyright protection.

A major new task next year will be the development of detailed RCA policies and procedures related to trademarks and copyrights. The committee will coordinate with the Translation Committee regarding related requirements for translations and any requirements that may need to be added to Translation Basics.